Part 110 (1/2)

'No!' returned Jonas, 'I'm not indeed. I'll play old Gooseberry with the office, and make you glad to buy me out at a good high figure, if you try any of your tricks with me.'

'I give you my honour--' Montague began.

'Oh! confound your honour,' interrupted Jonas, who became more coa.r.s.e and quarrelsome as the other remonstrated, which may have been a part of Mr Montague's intention; 'I want a little more control over the money.

You may have all the honour, if you like; I'll never bring you to book for that. But I'm not a-going to stand it, as it is now. If you should take it into your honourable head to go abroad with the bank, I don't see much to prevent you. Well! That won't do. I've had some very good dinners here, but they'd come too dear on such terms; and therefore, that won't do.'

'I am unfortunate to find you in this humour,' said Tigg, with a remarkable kind of smile; 'for I was going to propose to you--for your own advantage; solely for your own advantage--that you should venture a little more with us.'

'Was you, by G--?' said Jonas, with a short laugh.

'Yes. And to suggest,' pursued Montague, 'that surely you have friends; indeed, I know you have; who would answer our purpose admirably, and whom we should be delighted to receive.'

'How kind of you! You'd be delighted to receive 'em, would you?' said Jonas, bantering.

'I give you my sacred honour, quite transported. As your friends, observe!'

'Exactly,' said Jonas; 'as my friends, of course. You'll be very much delighted when you get 'em, I have no doubt. And it'll be all to my advantage, won't it?'

'It will be very much to your advantage,' answered Montague poising a brush in each hand, and looking steadily upon him. 'It will be very much to your advantage, I a.s.sure you.'

'And you can tell me how,' said Jonas, 'can't you?'

'SHALL I tell you how?' returned the other.

'I think you had better,' said Jonas. 'Strange things have been done in the a.s.surance way before now, by strange sorts of men, and I mean to take care of myself.'

'Chuzzlewit!' replied Montague, leaning forward, with his arms upon his knees, and looking full into his face. 'Strange things have been done, and are done every day; not only in our way, but in a variety of other ways; and no one suspects them. But ours, as you say, my good friend, is a strange way; and we strangely happen, sometimes, to come into the knowledge of very strange events.'

He beckoned to Jonas to bring his chair nearer; and looking slightly round, as if to remind him of the presence of Nadgett, whispered in his ear.

From red to white; from white to red again; from red to yellow; then to a cold, dull, awful, sweat-bedabbled blue. In that short whisper, all these changes fell upon the face of Jonas Chuzzlewit; and when at last he laid his hand upon the whisperer's mouth, appalled, lest any syllable of what he said should reach the ears of the third person present, it was as bloodless and as heavy as the hand of Death.

He drew his chair away, and sat a spectacle of terror, misery, and rage. He was afraid to speak, or look, or move, or sit still. Abject, crouching, and miserable, he was a greater degradation to the form he bore, than if he had been a loathsome wound from head to heel.

His companion leisurely resumed his dressing, and completed it, glancing sometimes with a smile at the transformation he had effected, but never speaking once.

'You'll not object,' he said, when he was quite equipped, 'to venture further with us, Chuzzlewit, my friend?'

His pale lips faintly stammered out a 'No.'

'Well said! That's like yourself. Do you know I was thinking yesterday that your father-in-law, relying on your advice as a man of great sagacity in money matters, as no doubt you are, would join us, if the thing were well presented to him. He has money?'

'Yes, he has money.'

'Shall I leave Mr Pecksniff to you? Will you undertake for Mr Pecksniff.'

'I'll try. I'll do my best.'

'A thousand thanks,' replied the other, clapping him upon the shoulder.